ESL students’ online and offline reading strategies: scrolling, clicking, flipping and reading / Izyani Mohamad Zaki, Fauziah Hassan and Abu Bakar Mohamed Razali

In this borderless world, computers and the Internet have become important tools of communication and learning and they have also become an important part of our lives. The opportunity to seek information through the computer has made reading an important language skill. Despite the importance of reading and technology,
little research to date has been carried out to compare the reading
strategies employed by readers when reading online compared to
offline. Such studies are important because awareness of the
similarities and differences on the strategies employed between these
two modes of learning will enable teachers to help develop students’
reading ability. Hence, this study investigates if there is a difference
between online and offline strategies used by second language
readers. The participants in this study were ESL undergraduates at
a university in Malaysia. The instrument employed was the Survey
of Reading Strategies (SORS) (Sheorey and Mokhtari, 2001) and
Online Survey of Register Strategies (OSORS) by Anderson (2003).
These questionnaires tap three different types of information: global
reading strategies, problem solving strategies, and support
strategies. The results of the study are discussed in terms of their
pedagogical implications in the L2 classroom.